May 20: 1982

Most know something about the famous story of Jonah and his strange encounter with the digestion process of the big fish. Whether, as someone has said, Jonah is a "tale of a whale" or a 'Whale of a tale" really is not the point. The truth of Jonah is about God's pursuit of a man who did not want to care.

Jonah, an Israelite prophet, felt the call from God to go to Ninevah, the capital of the Assyrians. The message was a call for the people to change their ways, treat each other more justly, or else. We must remember that the Assyrians were the hated enemy of the Israelites. Nothing would have pleased Jonah more than the Assyrians getting zapped by God. 

God got through to Jonah to go to Ninevah which was basically due EAST of Israel. Jonah hopped a boat to Tarshish, modern Spain, which was about as far due WEST as anyone could go in that day. That's how Jonah wound up on the boat, wound up being thrown overboard, wound up being rapid transited for three days in the belly of a big fish, and wound up going to Ninevah after all. Much to Jonah's disappointment, the Ninevites responded to his warning and did not, at least for a while, get zapped. The book ends with God trying to explain to Jonah why he cares about even the people the Israelites hate.

Jonah, in a way, is every human who does not want to care as much about people, or at least, certain people, as God wants. Jonah in a way is the part of you and me who just does not want to get involved with the problems of people and life. Jonah is about the God who gets us in deeper in life with all its headaches and heartaches. Jonah is about the God who will never give us any peace as long as we run away from the hurts and needs of people around us. 

Now, in an instant of time, move six or seven centuries to the disciples and brothers James and John. One day, these brash brothers said to Jesus: "We want you to do for us whatever we ask. (That would be nice if God would be our cosmic go-for.) Jesus asks them what they want and they respond: "We want to have it made in the shade and sit on each side of you when God puts you on your royal throne. You can almost see Jesus shaking his head in exasperation: "You don't understand. They're not going to give me the key to the city in Jerusalem. Some people enjoy bossing others around. But it is not that way with us. If you want to be great, then you must be servant to people.”

Like Jonah to James and John, we move to Paul's letter to the church at Philippi. This passage in Philippians 2 is crucial in the development of the early Christians' christology. Christology refers to understanding and interpreting just who Jesus was and what he means for life. Bible scholars have a word for Paul's christology here. It is called KENOSIS. It comes from the Greek word meaning "to empty". Jesus "emptied" himself of all the divine trappings, says Paul, and took the form of a human servant. He became like us so that he could be with us in our predicaments and problems. Jesus has been exalted to be God's number one, Paul proclaims, not because he strutted around the earth like a king but because he stooped like a servant to ease people's pain: he hugged the broken hearted, fed the hungry, and challenged the people users.

Henri Nouwen has written that in Philippians Paul has announced the "downward mobility" of God. God moves down into the muck and mess of life to be with us. That is particularly hard for us to hear today in our time of worship of "upward mobility". The "upward mobility" mania of our time says happiness is just around the next promotion, purchase, or possession. So unless we are careful, God's ways and our ways clash and collide. To the Philippians and Huntsvillians, Paul points the way to Jesus. Not up there in the heavenly by and by but here on earth where people need a lot of healing, hugging, and caring.

1. So, FIRST of all, we need to realize that if we want God in our lives, then he GETS US IN DEEPER IN THE PROBLEMS AND PREDICAMENTS OF EACH OTHER. Like Jonah learned, God pushes us to care more than we want to care, moves us in directions we don't want to go, and causes us to be restless until we live in his way. Like James and John, we want Jesus to give us a guarantee that we will always have financial security, happy marriages, and children who don't get cavities or embarrass us. We get a God who sends us as his servants to hungry people around the world, to the crabby neighbor next door, or the bitter family member across the table. Jesus, Paul announces, moved down deep into the nitty gritty not always "they- lived-happy-ever-after situations" of human life. That's where he is. That's where we have to be if we want a life worth living and a death worth dying. 

Not long ago, I heard a young mother share her experiences of battling cancer. After the removal of her breast, she endured the total loss of her hair for a while as she underwent treatments. Now, a few years later, she faces the uncertainty of the future and hopes to stay well for her children who are still small. She told of how she was helped by people who were willing to visit her not preaching to her to get right with the lord or teaching her about pop psychology,  positive attitudes, but who were with her to just listen and talk.

She read a passage from Joanna Greeberg's book I Never Promised You a Rose Garden to describe her understanding of God. The story is about a young girl's fight to overcome mental illness. It is a fictionalized version of Greenberg's own true life battle with emotional illness as a teenager. The young girl Deborah asks her doctor to promise her she won't get hurt again if she gets well. The doctor answers: "Look here, I never promised you a rose garden. I never promised you perfect justice...and I never promised you peace or happiness. My help is so that you can be free to fight for all these things. The only reality I offer is challenge, and being well is being free to accept it or not at whatever level you are capable. I never promise lies, and the rose garden world of perfection is a lie...and a bore, too."

To James and John, to you and me, Jesus does not promise lies. He does not give us everything we want. But he does from deep within us and from people around us get to us what we need. And that is the strength to struggle with our particular versions of uncertainties or in some cases our own brand of only-too-certainties of our problems. To Jonah and to you and me, God shows us the way to go if we want to be with him and have him with us. And that way, according to Paul, is in deeper into the human mazes of life. 

2. God's help to us through Jesus comes as COURAGE TO LET GO. It is interesting to note Paul's choice of words about the downward-mobility-getting-in-deeper action of Jesus. He did not "count equality with God a thing to be GRASPED. "...clawed at, held on to with your finger nails...he let go.

Although I have recently discovered I have enough sense and coordination to run, I have never been much of an athlete. So any physical accomplishment for me has been highly treasured. When I was about 12 or 13, my uncle took it upon himself to teach me to water ski. He explained that I needed to keep the rope between my knees, keep my knees bent until I was completely upon the water, and to keep my arms extended. The first time I tried, I remember being surprised at how much force I felt in my arms as the boat lurched forward. Not sure I could hold on, I gritted my teeth and determined to hold on for dear life, which is what it seemed like dear life at the time. The problem was that I held on too well. I came up out of the water, onto the bottom of my skis, and quickly face-first back into the water. I held on and felt myself being pulled under, felt my skis go, then my ski belt, and then my bathing suit. Before I swallowed any more water, I let go. The boat circled for me. And as I was sputtering in the water, my uncle said: "Oh, by the way, when you fall, unless you want to drown, let go. 

Letting go is one of life's most difficult feats. Oh, how we want to hold on to the way it was instead of facing the way it is now. After the death of someone, the end of a relationship, moving to a new place, leaving a job, it is hard to let go. There is the temptation to be so fretful and self-pitying that we miss what is going on in the now.

Actually, I have noticed that letting go of a past life situation is a task even when we are moving on to better things. As exciting as graduating from high school or college is, as exhilarating as it is to get married, as satisfying as it is to raise a child or retire, it is also a bit scary. The unknown has a way of making the known look better than it may really be. 

Martin Marty is a well-known church historian and writer. Last year, his wife of some 30 years died. Recently, in his Christian Century journal column, he shared: "The deepest truth I have discovered is that if one accepts the loss, if one gives up clinging to what is irretrievably gone, then the nothing which is left is not barren but enormously fruitful. Everything that one has lost comes flowing back out of the darkness, one's relation to it is now free and unclinging. But the riches of the nothing contains far more, it is all possible, it is a spring of freedom." Freed from living in the past, we are freed to be nourished by the memories and learnings from it, so that we can jump more fully into the now. 

The Jesus who did not "grasp" but let go to be with us helps you and me to let go. To let go of our pasts. To let go of our bitterness. To let go of our false pride. To let go of our griefs and self-pity. 

3. The God of Jonah, James, John, Jesus, and Paul pushes us into the middle of sticky situations – oftentimes with some questionable characters. He sends us in as servants not hot shots. God sends us into life with what Gail Sheehy calls SELECTIVE INTENSITY. In her book Pathfinders, a sequel to her Passages, Gail Sheehy shares what she has learned about people who have gained some mature happiness in life, people she calls "pathfinders". She notices that pathfinders, people who have learned to be durable and caring participants in life, tend to be on into the second half of life. One of their secrets is what she names "selective intensity." These folks have learned that you have to be careful about what you give your life energy and lifetime to getting. Some things just do not pay off. Several years ago, in another place, I stood by the bedside of an elderly man a few days before he died. With tears in his eyes, he said: "You know, all my life I worked to have a lot of money. Now, I have some. But I have to go off and leave it.”

I am not saying that if you spend your life getting all you can and looking out for number one that you will get swallowed up like Jonah by a big fish. But chances are that you will be swallowed by a selfishness that will be about as nourishing to your soul as diet soda is to your body. 

God taught Jonah and Jesus taught James and John that people are what is worth getting intense about. Aggravating, irritating, on again-off again people. If some of us worked as intensely and intently on our families or marriages as we do on our tennis, golf, or running, then our lives and all of those involved with us would be a lot better off. Many of us were as intense and intent on just being glad we are alive, even with a few wounds and scars, as we are on being bitter and jealous, then our food might taste better, the air breathe fresher, and our sleep sounder.

Getting in deeper...letting go...selective intensity, all three of these feats require God's help and urging. They go against our grain. They don't feel natural. In fact, one of the surest signs that it is God not just us fooling ourselves is that we feel pushed to do something we do not want to do. God, thank you for being willing to get in deep with us.